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On April 10, 1929, the Provincial Purchasing Agent issued its annual "Tender for Motor Vehicle Number Plates", with a deadline for submissions of April 30th - which was six months prior to the "Wall Street Crash" of October 1929.

In addition to 105,000 pairs of passenger plates, 2,500 dealer plates, 1,500 motorcycle plates, 750 trailer plates, 70 single motor vehicle plates(?) and 30 motorcycle dealer plates we ordered.

Specifications for the 1930 plates were available from the Superintendent of Provincial Police, upon request, sample plates were to accompany all tenders, and plates manufactured in British Columbia were, once again, to be given preference over out-of-province proposals.

Despite the routine nature of the Tender for the 1930 license plates, a sea-change had occurred the previous year when, on July 18, 1928, British Columbians elected a new provincial government headed by Simon Fraser Tolmie and his Conservative Party, thereby ending 12 years of Liberal Party rule:

While the election had occurred too late in the year to affect the awarding of the contract for the 1929 license plate order - which went to J.R. Tacey & Son again - it would have significant implications for the 1930 contract.

The Company: Thompson Heating & Ventilating

Interstingly, not as much is known about the Thompson Heating & Ventilating Company in comparison to what is known of J.R. Tacey & Son, who preceded Thompson in making license plates for the province.

George B. Thompson, the President of the company does not appear to have advertised often or been listed in the local city directories, nor does it appear that he or his company were ever profiled by the local press in the same way as Tacey.

What is important to know about George B. Thompson is that, like Tacey he was also active in local Vancouver politics albeit it for the Conservative Party. This included being President of the Ward Eleven Conservative Association in Vancouver as well as an appointment as a Provincial Elections Commissioner in 1929.

Consequently, when the Conservative Party won office at the provincial level in 1928 and had the ability to influence the awarding of various contracts, companies such as Thompson's stood to benefit.

Not surprisingly, when the awarding of the 1930 license plate contract was announced, Thompson Heating & Ventilating Company won with a bid that was precisely half-a-cent less per pair of plates than what Tacey had bid to win the 1929 contract; $0.135/pair versus $0.14/pair by Tacey.

 

On November 11, 1929, it was reported that the 1930 license plates were being delivered to the various field offices of the Provincial Police and were described as "presenting a striking contrast in colors ... [having] yellow figures on a red background."

It was further reported that "on December 1 [of 1929], the staff at the [Vancouver] Courthouse will commence issuing 1930 plates to motorists in posession of 1929 licenses. This accommodation, however, is limited to renewals. Otherwise, the new license plates will be on sale a day or two before Christmas."

Even though some motorists could pick-up their plates from the beginning of December, it was prohibited to attach the plates to a car prior to January 1st.

Plates numbered 1 to 21,000 were to be retained at the headquarters of the Provincial Police in Victoria for issuance in the Capital City as well as by mail to motorists throughout the province.

As attractive as the plates may have been, their was a concern that they were "not likely to keep their brilliant carmine color" with "experts" declaring that "the color will not stand the summer sun."

An additional criticism was that "many motorists have found considerable trouble in fitting their new plates to the holders on their car owing to the plate bolt slots being half an inch shorter than usual This has necessitated boring quarter-inch holes into the plates."

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So, how does a company with no experience making license plates or the machinery to do so win a contract and produce the largest order of license plates the province had ever requested (215,000+ individual plates) in the span of only 6 months?

At first glance, it was believed that Thompson followed the same path that Tacey had blazed 12 years earlier by reaching out to a different company to purchase license plate equipment at a reported cost of $6,000.

By early January of 1930, however, this question was revisited after the province announced it had purchased J.R. Tacey & Son's equipment in order to move production to Oakalla Prison in Burnaby (see the next section on the 1931-1935 plates for more details).

Why would a Conservative government purchase the equipment of a Liberal affiliated company (Tacey) when it could have rewarded one of its own (Thompson) by buying their equipment and offering a lucrative services contract?

On January 11, 1930, the Vancouver Sun opined, rather knowingly, that "there is a general feeling that a statement as to whether the 1930 plates were made in B.C. or elsewhere would be prove interesting." [emphasis added]

The first to take up the challenge was Thomas Uphill, Independent Labour Party member for Fernie, who, on March 5, 1930, rose in the Legislature and asked the Conservative Attorney General Robert Pooley where the 1930 license plates had been manufactured.  Pooley's response was a very evasive sounding: "no definite information."

• did Thompson mislead the provincial government in terms of his license plate making capabilities when submitting his bid for the 1930 contract?

• did the Tolmie administration complete due diligence on Thompson prior to awarding the 1930 contract or did it willfully ignore certain aspects in order to award it to a partisan?

Fate does not appear to have been looking kindly on George Thompson as the calendar rolled over to a new decade on January 1, 1930.

Not only did the province announce that it was taking over the production of license plates by setting up its own shop at Oakalla Prison in Burnaby, thereby depriving Thompson's company of a lucrative government contract at a time when the economic situation continued to deteriorate.

But, it was doing so with the assistance of his main competitor; J.R. Tacey & Son whose equipment it had contracted to buy along with training of Oakalla staff by Tacey's employees. This would render Thompson's plate making equipment virtually worthless - if it existed (see the next section on the 1931-1935 plates for more details).

18 months later, Thompson would be dead at the age of 41 following a collision between the truck he was driving and a street car crossing the Granville Street bridge on July 6, 1931.

Local press reports from the time indicate that Thompson and a passenger were crossing the bridge at 11:25 p.m. when they collided with the street car "240 feet north of the Third Avenue ramp on Granville Street bridge." The passenger was tossed from the vehicle and survived but Thompson's body was pinned beneath the wreckage and "practically decapitated".

The police reported that Thompson's truck had been heading south across the bridge, likely back to his business premises at 1507 West 4th Avenue when it was "telescoped" by a north bound street car (i.e. the truck went under the chassis of the street car).

As can be seen in the image below, the Granville Street bridge at this time accommodated two street car lines (one north, the other south) which shared lanes with vehicle traffic using the bridge. The Third Avenue ramp can be seen near the two big billboards at left:

Given street cars ran on fixed lines, it would appear that Thompson had drifted into on-coming traffic and was likely at fault.

As can be seen in the following illustrative examples, collisions between street cars and vehicles did not usually end well for the drivers of vehicles given the size differential between the two:

Thompson left behind his wife (reported to be "in a state of collapse" the night of the accident) and five children and, like Tacey, he is also buried in Vancouver's Mountain View Cemetery.

Apart from the obvious tragedy of the incident, there seems to be a bitter irony to it as well, given Thompson shuffled off this mortal coil driving a vehicle that would have displayed 1931 license plates made at Oakalla instead of at his own shop, made with equipment purchased by a Conservative government from his Liberal competitor, and displaying the curved dies most associated with J.R. Tacey & Son license plates.

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